A new Yale University study argues that seawater desalination should play an important role in helping combat worldwide fresh water shortages once conservation, reuse and other methods have been exhausted. The study also provides insights into how desalination technology can be made more affordable and energy efficient.

Nanometrics Incorporated, a leading supplier of advanced metrology systems, today announced that Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has accepted its UniFire 7900 metrology system for process control of advanced wafer scale packaging.

Researchers demonstrate switching of a perpendicularly magnetized cobalt dot driven by in-plane current injection at room temperature.

A new collaborative study at the University of Virginia details for the first time a new type of catalytic site where oxidation catalysis occurs, shedding new light on the inner workings of the process.

Wissenschaftler des Heidelberger Instituts fuer Theoretische Studien (HITS) und Aerzte der Universitaetsmedizin Mannheim sind an einer neuen Forschergruppe der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft zur Blutgerinnung beteiligt. Langfristiges Ziel der Zusammenarbeit von Wissenschaftlern ist es, die Diagnostik und Therapie von Blutgerinnungsstoerungen, Thrombosen und Schlaganfaellen zu verbessern.

Exotic artificial composite materials called metamaterials can be engineered with certain electromagnetic properties that allows them to act as invisibility cloaks. These materials bend all light or other electromagnetic waves around an object hidden inside a metamaterial cloak, to emerge on the other side as if they had passed through an empty volume of space. Researchers have already been experimenting with cloaking devices for various, usually longer wavelengths such as microwave or infrared waves. Recently, even graphene has been added to the family of cloaking materials. Now, for the first time, a team of scientists at UC Berkeley have devised an invisibility cloak material that hides objects from detection using light that is visible to humans.

The FlexTech Alliance, focused on developing the electronic display and the flexible, printed electronics industry supply chains, today announced its 11th annual Flexible Electronics and Displays Conference and Exhibition will take place February 6-9, 2012 in Phoenix, Ariz.

Gram for gram, novel carbon nanofiber-filled coatings devised by researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology and Texas A+M University outperformed conventional flame retardants used in the polyurethane foam of upholstered furniture and mattresses by at least 160 percent and perhaps by as much as 1,130 percent.

Researchers describe how tailored single strands of DNA can be used to purify the highly desired 'armchair' form of carbon nanotubes.

Highly efficient organic light-emitting diodes are created by optimizing the molecular structure and device configuration.

Mark Ming-Cheng Cheng, Ph.D., assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Wayne State University, recently received a five-year, $475,000 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant from the National Science Foundation to study the potential of graphene, a novel carbon material, in the development of a reliable, high-performance, long-term implantable electrode system to improve quality of life using nanotechnology.

New 3-D-nanostructured chip offers a litmus test for surface tension (and doubles as a carrier for secret messages).

Cranfield's unique Nanomedicine MSc is the first course of its kind within the UK and Europe to bridge the gap between nanotechnology and medicine.

By coating gold nanoparticles with antibodies that bind to specific strains of the flu virus and then measuring how the particles scatter laser light, the technology can detect influenza in minutes at a cost of only a fraction of a penny per exam.

A move toward smaller and smaller sample sizes is leading to a new generation of mass spectrometry instrumentation, reports Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News (GEN).

Researchers based at the Institute of Intelligent Machines, Chinese Academy of Sciences, are developing a plasma-assisted strategy for densely doping indium to give coral-like SnO2 nanostructures. Gas sensors based on the materials platform exhibit a high response and good selectivity to chlorobenzene.